


much ado about something

by noiselesspatientspider (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, ship feelings, tumblr style not!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-08-17
Updated: 2002-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4591719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/noiselesspatientspider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>so I was seized for an inexplicable reason with scads of feelings about the romantic fates of the various dudes in the MCU, and now I am going to tell you about them in long, tragic run-on sentences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	much ado about something

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on tumblr, and it's very much a tumblr-style not!fic, with snippets of actual dialogue. written pre-Ultron, with a few post-Ultron edits. I didn't add a section for Quicksilver because I honestly have no idea what to do with him, and I'm utterly ignoring everything that movie did to character development because haha what character development.

1\. Steve/Tony. Y'all, my dearest friends, I know that in the comics they are basically Big Dumb Husbands, and we all longed for this to be true of the movies, but it’s not to be. Tony is horrible and pointy and Steve is a shield, literally, the most resilient stubborn stupid self-sacrificing human, and really, how could we ever think Steve/Tony was going to be a thing when Sam Wilson and Rhodey Rhodes exist.

* * *

 

2\. Steve/Sam. Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers were born to be together don’t look at me like that, you know it’s true. I am the goddamn queen of angst, and I have read a million and one words about white men with feelings and loved them all, and if you dare to say that Steve Rogers, in his good little unicorn heart, would throw Sam Wilson over for Bucky, I will physically fight you. (And if you think Bucky would let that happen, okay, he may be a brainwashed super assassin but protecting Steve runs as deep as breathing. Maybe deeper, some days.)

Steve and Sam go on a roadtrip to hunt for Bucky and Steve is SO CONFLICTED, oh god, he probably spends months averting his eyes and blushing when Sam comes out in a towel, and he knows this is idiotic, he was in the ARMY, he has seen all manner of peen. Plus he is conflicted because Bucky, because he and Bucky spent their entire lives dancing around each other, pretending, and they wouldn’t have to pretend here. And what do you do when you’ve constructed an entire emotional architecture around a situation that no longer exists? He has spent so long loving Bucky and even longer lying to himself “I Am Over Bucky” that it takes him a while to realize that, actually, maybe he is? And this goes on for months until Sam, dear beautiful flirtatious Sam is patient but also he believes in Talking About Things Unlike Some People I Could Name. I mean, the man works at the VA. He knows what happens when you refuse to talk about things.

* * *

 

3\. Steve/Bucky. There are many flavors of Steve/Bucky that I love, all pre-war or during the war, and none of them involve Peggy’s death, please stop killing Peggy, damn. The only acceptable Peggy-free Steve/Bucky is if Peggy confronts Natalie Dormer’s character about her kiss with Steve and they have a great deal of passionate and angry sex.

Flavor #1: terrible one-sided pining, aka white men with (repressed) feelings. Varieties include: Steve is straight and Bucky is not, but trying desperately to hide it (I am a fan of bisexual!Bucky but terribly flirtatious gay!Bucky is also dreadful) as well as its reverse, where baby twink Steve watches from the window like a Victorian damsel as Bucky brings home an endless parade of girls.

Flavor #2: everyone is pining, this is *Jean-Ralphio voice* the woooooorst, stab me in the heart with an icicle. Bucky shoots dagger-eyes at anyone who so much as looks at Steve (they live in Brooklyn, and Steve gets in fights in alleyways, and Bucky is perpetually terrified for many, many reasons) and Steve aggressively tries not to hate the girls Bucky goes dancing with, because it isn’t their fault he’s a goddamn queer, is it. There is a lot of guilt (that let's be honest, has nothing to do with Steve being Irish Catholic and everything to do with Steve being Steve) and furious, silent wanking. When Steve comes out of the tube a foot taller and doesn't know what to do with his hands, Bucky spends two weeks refusing to look him in the eye, because now everyone can see, and he really will lose him forever

(Sometimes the Howling Commandos take matters into their own hands, because watching these two disastrous monsters is intolerable.)

Flavor #3: (when I am feeling angsted out) Steve and Bucky have been fucking for about a million years, and they’re essentially an old married couple, and everyone in the Howling Commandos knows it, and no one gives the smallest of shits. This is war, goddammit, and Steve would literally die for each of them, and Bucky has quietly saved their asses so many times. Someone makes a comment, once, and Dum Dum and Jim put the fear of God into him.

Bucky is coldly furious with Steve for about a week for putting himself in so much danger (after everything I did to keep your ass safe you idiot-)

Peggy finally takes him aside and basically says look, this is the man you fell in love with, he was never going to do anything less. Bucky makes noises of outraged denial, and Peggy gives him a Look, and Bucky stops ignoring Steve.

Flavor #4, can be an addendum to #2 or #3: Steve/Bucky/Peggy. Peggy is an incredibly intelligent, resourceful woman, and she loves Steve, and she knows that Steve will not be happy if Bucky cuts himself out of Steve’s life in a misguided attempt to “let him go be happy,” which is what will happen if someone doesn’t talk some sense into them. (Everyone thinks Steve is the one with the martyr complex, but he learned it from somewhere.) Things work out alright, really.

(Variation: Steve and Bucky have been fucking for about a million years, and both of them fall in love with Peggy and are horribly guilt-stricken until she talks some sense into them.)

Everything goes to hell when Bucky dies. It’s easier when Peggy- with Peggy- she comes and finds Steve, half-afraid he’s managed to drink himself to death even with the serum, but. They are careful around each other. Peggy loves Steve fiercely and is equally fiercely determined not to let that ruin anything she has fought tooth and nail to gain. She wore that red dress, once, to make sure both Steve and Bucky knew who they were dealing with, but she doesn’t pull it out again until after the crash. She goes to the Stork Club, utterly devastating, hair curled within an inch of its life and lipstick crisper than her accent. She watches the couples dance, and she leaves at eight-thirty without having spoken to anyone. Then she goes to work, and to war.

Fast forward, oh, seventy-odd years.

Bucky comes back. Steve finds him, eventually, but Natasha finds him first, and gives him a lot of advice about ledgers, and, well. He was hollow-eyed after Austria and he is still hollow-eyed, tiptoeing around remembering how to be a person. He and Steve do not have That Conversation. It’s been 70 years but some things don’t change. (What? You thought several decades of torture were going to turn an already-quieted Bucky into someone who talks about his feelings?)

Bucky goes to confession for the things he can remember, and the priest is old and kind and does not vomit in his cell as the man on the other side of the screen recites a litany of horrors. (He runs to the vestibule bathroom afterwards and vomits then, wiping a shaking liver-spotted hand across his mouth.)

“What are the three criteria for a mortal sin?” he asks Bucky.

“Been a long time since catechism, Father,” Bucky replies, after a beat.

“Did you have full knowledge?” Father asks. “Did you consent freely, without duress, to do those things?”

Bucky is silent.

“I will forgive you for those things you need forgiveness for,” the priest says. “Your penance is to forgive yourself for the rest of it.”

(This is rapidly turning to feelings about Catholic!Bucky, which is not really the point of this post.)

Steve and Bucky do not get together. Bucky is unable to trust anyone, even Steve, the way he needs to, and besides, he’ll die before he lets Steve leave the good thing he has with Sam to come fix a wreck like him. There is no pining. The man who loved Steve entirely, consumingly, wretchedly, that man died a long, long time ago. Bucky remembers him dimly, in little honey-tinged pieces, and it’s alright. He goes to Mass, a lot. He talks to the priest some. The priest suggests he talk to some monks he knows, but Bucky doesn’t trust himself to go sleep anywhere that only has one exit. He starts a garden, instead. (Either he refuses to have any contact with SHIELD or he hunts HYDRA at night and grows beautiful, massive tomatoes in the daytime.)

* * *

4, and we return to the actual point of this. Tony/Rhodey. Rhodey and Sam have a club called “why do we love these stupid self-sacrificing white men.” They get together every Thursday for drinks.

(“He tried used his heart to recharge my suit ohmygod I will kill this man, and then I will be court-martialed.”

“Yesterday he jumped out of the thirty-first story of a building chasing an alien that could fly. If I didn't have my wings on I would’ve had to bring him back to life so I could kill him myself.”)

Tony and Rhodey have been friends since MIT, and Rhodey spent half a year combing Afghanistan for him, and honestly, you do the math here. (Pepper and Natasha are extremely happy together.)

Variation I: Tony is utterly incapable of having any sort of relationship with a human person, and Rhodey is unfailingly loyal and Pepper is devastatingly capable, and together they manage Tony quite nicely.

“Our entire relationship seems to be based on keeping Tony from blowing himself up,” Pepper says one night.

“I wouldn’t say our _entire_ relationship,” Rhodey replies. “I mean, I do actually love you. Along with caring way too much about a egotistical tin can.”

“Good,” says Pepper. “Our lives may be wrapped up in a man-child who thinks he’s God, but at least we can be wrapped up together.”

Variation II: Pepper and Rhodey manage Tony quite nicely. Also there is a lot of sex. Tony tries to leave, the first night, because he refuses to let anyone see him having nightmares.

Pepper grabs his ankle before he’s even off the bed. “If you want to leave, that’s fine, and if you don’t want us to see your nightmares for your sake, that’s also fine, but do not pull that martyr bullshit with me.”

“Man, I’m kinda offended that between me, a decorated military hero, and Pepper, who can literally breathe fire when pushed, and your suit, you don’t think we could take your suit,” Rhodey adds. The next few nights, he simply drapes all of his limbs on top of Tony, and Tony Stark is many things, but he is not a large man, and Rhodey is surprisingly heavy.

* * *

5\. Clint/Bruce. Y'all I did not ship this, and then I read two fics: [this one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/889942) and one in which Clint and Bruce go to California, which is great and which I cannot for the life of me find, but anyway now I do. They spend a lot of time working through shit, my god, both of them have stables worth of horseshit to deal with, and Clint fucks the fuck up, and Bruce spends about a million years being soft-spoken and painfully cautious, loving that Clint doesn’t treat him like a bomb, because Clint is also very good at figuring out what people’s triggers are, you don’t spend years being basically platonic-married to the Black Widow without recognizing what buttons not to push. (It is so hard for me to reconcile comic!Clint and MCU!Clint, they are two entirely different personalities, help, because comic!Clint and Bruce would be a Disaster, comic!Clint is many things but subtle is not one of them, he and Bruce would be explosive and horrible)

* * *

6\. Clint & Natasha I KNOW I KNOW everyone in the world thinks they are doin’ the do and sometimes I can read that fine but honestly? I like them better as platonic life partners, okay, both of them know they are not long-term romantic relationship material, and Natasha has zero interest in ever being with a man sexually, and Clint is fairly sure he has zero interest in being with anyone sexually.

(When I am not feeling 100% behind Clint/Bruce I am 100% behind ace!Clint, although the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and the more i think about it the more i think that Bruce might be extremely afraid of the kind of loss of control that comes with sex, and ace!Clint is just like “dude trust me that really won’t be a problem.”)

Natasha and Clint know how to move around each other without even thinking. Natasha is always thinking, okay, she has stayed alive this long by spending every waking moment planning, and Clint seems to know what the plan is without being told. Basically, everything in [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/405828) except the sex.

* * *

Sometimes, when I am feeling too nice to inflict Tony and Steve on them, 7. Rhodey/Sam. They start off swapping war stories, and things progress from there. (They do not pull rank in the bedroom, are you kidding? That's fun if you've never seen situations that played out like a nightmare version of that exact scenario, so.)

* * *

8\. Oh fuck I forgot about Thor. Thor and Jane forever, except when Jane leaves him for Sif (or Jane and Sif and Thor and oh hell, maybe the entire Warriors Three, who the fuck knows, Jane is an adventurous woman and Thor certainly doesn’t flinch from a challenge.) (I’m not even going to address Thor/Loki except to say that adoptive brothers are still brothers, Jesus.)

* * *

9\. Nick Fury, who is sadly neglected in fandom, I ship with no one at all except perhaps a very, very secret wife, the equivalent of Clint’s weird farm-wife, but with a Real Personality and Independent Narrative Importance TM, to whom he tells nothing but who knows nearly everything anyway. But honestly I have trouble even seeing that, because Nick Fury is a brilliant man and a fantastic strategist and a spy who is still alive, and for all those reasons he knows better than to create vulnerabilities where they don’t already exist. (I don’t think he’d sleep with anyone at SHIELD, because he is a brilliant man and a fantastic strategist and a spy who is still alive.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> just so y'all know, the original title of this work was "sorry i wrote 2.2k of self-indulgent meta" which I think should really be the title of all my fics
> 
> come say [hi](shipyrds.tumblr.com)


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